Alyssa Marie Bethancourt

Tag Archives: Autism Acceptance Month

Today it is seven days to Book Launch, and it is also World Autism Awareness Acceptance Day. This seems like a good moment to call your attention to this blog’s header.

That’s right! We’ve got an autistic person on our hands here! And I can assure you that it has most definitely shaped the writing I do. How could it not? Autism is not a thing I have, it’s a part of who I am.

I was twenty-five years old when I received my autism diagnosis. At that time, my life had been decomposing at a snowballing rate for the last several years and I’d been trying to get to the bottom of why I couldn’t handle very basic everyday things that everyone else seemed just fine at. In retrospect and placing it within the larger context of my childhood moving forward, the diagnosis of autism seems super obvious. At the time, it was a revelation that helped me slowly begin to get my life under control.

By then, I’d already been writing about the characters and cultures of Asrellion for a decade and a half, so they were already fully-fledged even so long ago. And without knowing it or even doing it on purpose, I had written what my friends would later observe (as if it were glaringly obvious) was an autistic protagonist. Not just that, but an entire autistic culture.

I remember an occasion early in my first marriage when my husband-at-the-time was raging at me about whatever had flown up his nose that day. The angrier he got about the subject, the more vital it had seemed to me to remain calm and rational. Someone was going to have to do something about this thing that was enraging him, and I didn’t see how it could be either one of us if I started foaming at the mouth the way he was.

But the calmer I remained, the more intense his rage grew. He asserted that I obviously didn’t care about [whatever damn thing it was] since I wasn’t getting worked up. I explained my thinking to him. In a towering fury, he spat that I was “a damn Vulcan!”

He had meant it as an insult (which, what?) but refusing to take it as one, I simply replied calmly, “I think you mean elf.”

Needless to say, he wasn’t amused, but this isn’t about that jackhole. The point is that even then, and without quite meaning to, I had developed a culture and worldview that functioned in a way that made sense to me as an autistic woman. I’d invented a society of, essentially, Vulcan elves. And how my elves and their culture fit into what is for all intents and purposes a larger neurotypical world is a major ongoing plot element in the stories I write.

I don’t want to do too much telling before any of you have had a chance to read the novel, but I do think it is obvious, relevant, and interesting how my atypical neurology plays out in the world of Asrellion through my characters.

On this World Autism Acceptance Day 2019, as we count down to the launch of Mornnovin, I invite you to ready yourselves for a fantasy world and protagonist that are unashamedly neurodivergent. To restate the old saying, this novel is about us and by us.

As a postscript, April being Autism Awareness Acceptance Month, if you are feeling any inclination to get involved with autism charities, outreach, education, or activism, as an autistic person I implore you to steer well clear of Autism Speaks. They are among the worst (if not outright seizing the title of Absolute Garbage Nightmare Worst) offenders in the predatory, disreputable charities department.

I will add, for those with genuine interest in making a charitable donation, a couple of links to organizations run by autistics for autistics. The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, which advocates not for a cure but for services, education, better diagnostics, and acceptance; and the Autism Women’s Network, which is super important because until recently (and still in some outdated pockets of academia,) it was believed that autism was only even possible in concurrence the XY chromosome, and it is only slowly becoming understood that female autistics have needs and challenges different from those faced by their male-presenting peers. There are other organizations as well, many of them locally-run programs specifically aimed at providing employment services and executive function education. Never again say that while Autism Speaks may not be ideal, they’re the only game out there and it’s better to give your money to them than to do nothing. Giving money to them is definitely worse than doing nothing, and there are other options.